Nursing Home Facilities in Georgia

Nursing Home Facilities in Georgia

It was all smiles in Milledgeville as noted geriatrics Dr. Carl Musso presided over the ribbon-cutting at the new Bostick Nursing Center.

Once fully operational, the facility will employ 330 people and house 300 residents. Many of these residents will be former correctional inmates who have completed their sentences and now require advanced care. Nursing home administrator Mike Couch oversaw the transformation of an older building on the campus of the Central State Hospital into a new 280-bed facility, and a place that will provide “a lot of jobs for this area.” Some dignitaries in attendance – including outgoing State Representative Rusty Kidd (I- Milledgeville) – praised Dr. Musso for overcoming various “loops and hurdles. . .to get this end result.”

Officials also predicted that the Bostick Nursing Center would create almost a thousand indirect jobs throughout Baldwin County.

Nursing Home Abuse

As a rule of thumb, most nursing home facilities are at maximum capacity when 80 percent of their beds are full. If there are many more patients than that, privacy becomes even more of an issue. In these situations, some residents become very territorial about seemingly trivial issues, such as “this is my seat in the dining hall” or “this is my spot on the couch,” and when conflicts erupt, they often become violent. In fact, resident-on-resident violence is one of the forms of nursing home abuse.

Liability

But resident-on-resident violence is infrequent and can be controlled. The bigger concern is nursing home abuse and the culprits more often that not are the facilities themselves. Overcrowded conditions, understaffed teams, and poorly trained staff often leads to nursing home abuse. Not all, but many nursing home facilities understaff. That means a facility will have one staffmember assist a resident when two staffmembers may be needed. This is due to facilities putting profits over people. And it happens.

When it happens residents suffer injuries. Families can bring claims for “damages” for these injuries that occur in a nursing home facility. Damages include compensation for both economic losses, such as medical bills, and noneconomic losses, such as pain and suffering. Additional punitive damages are available as well, in many situations.